If you have a rather new TwinFrozr III, forget it. They don't unlock. But still, they are seriously quick and silent cards.

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This is true. The newer, laser-cut cards will not unlock shaders, but flashing the BIOS in the aforementioned manner will still increase overclocking headroom. This can be very useful, considering the ridiculously low headroom given with the stock BIOS.

Its not that easy finding unlockable cards period. Not now anyway. I have purchased 4 cards so far to find one! I purchased an XFX 6950 2GB, VTX3D and and two MSI 6950 Twin Frozr's. So I have the VTX3d 6950 2GB that won't unlock, an XFX and one MSI Twin Frozr III!

I know a forum member here Exodusprime1337 bought 2x MSI Twin Frozr III PE/OC cards and both unlocked to 6970s and both overclocked to over 1000 core with the same bios listed above, its luck of the draw 6950 is a lower binned part for a reason some ARE defective some are 6970s that needed to be put into 6950s to meet manufacturering goals etc.

Do you want me to take a picture of the card sn etc on the back??? We should make a better table of cards the MFG date serial number make model etc so we can work out what cards can be done and what cannot is there any pattern to cards that can be unlocked and those that can't.

Do you want me to take a picture of the card sn etc on the back??? We should make a better table of cards the MFG date serial number make model etc so we can work out what cards can be done and what cannot is there any pattern to cards that can be unlocked and those that can't.

Its not that easy finding unlockable cards period. Not now anyway. I have purchased 4 cards so far to find one! I purchased an XFX 6950 2GB, VTX3D and and two MSI 6950 Twin Frozr's. So I have the VTX3d 6950 2GB that won't unlock, an XFX and one MSI Twin Frozr III!

Do you want me to take a picture of the card sn etc on the back??? We should make a better table of cards the MFG date serial number make model etc so we can work out what cards can be done and what cannot is there any pattern to cards that can be unlocked and those that can't.

The build quality of MSI cards is fantastic.

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If you want to maintain it, it would be a great idea for those who want to determine whether or not their card unlocks.

The label says it was made in July 2011. Which makes sense. Look at the 4 digits after the letter "B" in the 3rd segment of the serial number. 1107 which translates into 2011 and 07 as July, the 7th month of the year

If you have a rather new TwinFrozr III, forget it. They don't unlock. But still, they are seriously quick and silent cards.

Click to expand...

Not completely true. I"m not trying to be rude but it's misleading to say they will not unlock. I personally have bought 6 of these very same cards in the last 2 weeks and have unlocked 100% of them. Some of them are laser cut yes, but others and probably many others are not laser cut.

Not completely true. I"m not trying to be rude but it's misleading to say they will not unlock. I personally have bought 6 of these very same cards in the last 2 weeks and have unlocked 100% of them. Some of them are laser cut yes, but others and probably many others are not laser cut.

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I don't understand, I purchased two of these cards to run in crossfireX but the second card which has the same date stamp 1107 in the SN. Will not unlock. Strange, it seems that some will and some won't. I think that it has to do with how the GPU chips are fabricated before they are heated onto the board as they are BGA?! I would think.

AMD obviously manufacture these in Tiawan or wherever.

What should I do would I get good performance from one unlocked 6950 and one thats not or will they both run at the speed of the slowest card?

What should I do guys?! Will the unlocked card run a 6970 bios or would you not recommend it?

The main reason it doesnt work is because it's most likely been laser cut. The chip revision date and the card date are not related the chip could be a new version and the card a new version. But the card can also be new while the chip is older version

I tried flashing it too.. GPUZ (ver 0.5.6) did not show any shader count increase..

Tried bystanders method of modding the exising bios, and also tried the MSI r6950pex.bin bios. I did notice that CCC default gpu and mem settings are higher now.

I have a question for you TFIII owners...

Bystanders instructions say to flip the bios switch to the 1 position.. (towards the back of
the card) I hate to sound stupid, but can someone please clarify the correct position of the
BIOS / fan profile switch.

- I am holding the card vertically with crossfire fingers and power connectors facing up and the fans and shroud facing towards me. The VGA/HDMI/DVI-D connectors are to my left and the DIP switch is approx 1.25 inches to the left of the power connectors.. The BIOS dip switch has "performance" labeled to the left side on the pcb, and silence on the right side of the dip switch.

The BIOS switch is currently set to Performance (toward the VGA connector side of the card. Bystanders instructions say to set the switch towards the 'BACK' of the card..
But on my card that would be the 'silence' setting.

When I performed the flash, I left the switch on the 'performance' setting. (I thought the silence setting only to be used to recover the card if the flash renders it inoperable.)

I left the switch in the Performance setting.. see pic
Can someone who has successfully done this to an MSI TFIII please confirm that I have the
switch set correctly for the flash?

Attached Files:

I didn't change the bios switch at all, since I figured the "silent" setting must be the backup BIOS. So I basically plugged in the card without changing anything after pulling it out from the box and ran the script to flash after changing the BIOS to the one provided by MSI.

Here is a link to a zip file containing all the things I used. After unzipping just run the "flash_to_6970.bat" as administrator and reboot. Check with GPU-Z.exe which is supplied in the zip-file as well if you have gained some more sharders. I have 1536.